Three members of a Merseyside street gang were locked up after a “pitched battle” with rivals at a petrol station saw an innocent taxi driver blasted twice with a shotgun.

Kieron McCarthy, 21, Karl Clark, 18, and Kurtis Sweeney, 19, were all caught on camera attacking a taxi containing members of another gang while one of their friends fired a sawn off shotgun at point blank range into the cab.

Dan Travers, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court how violence erupted following a “chance encounter” between six members of the West Vale Street Gang and their rival the Pingey Crew, from the Tower Hill area of Kirkby.

McCarthy, Clark, Sweeney and the others who have not been identified, were dropped off at the West Vale petrol station on the corner of Whitefield Road and Richard Hesketh Drive, Kirkby, after messing around in the back of a taxi.

Karl Clark

While they were waiting for friends another taxi driver dropped off members of the Pingey Crew who immediately headed for the other gang brandishing bottles as weapons.

Mr Travers said the two groups “squared off” against each other until one of the West Vale gang produced a sawn off shotgun and loaded it, prompting the others to flee back to the taxi.

Mr Travers said: “He was being shouted at by his occupants to move away. He didn’t want to reverse and run someone over.”

The car was being kicked the windows smashed by Kieron McCarthy, Clark and Sweeney and then the front passenger door was opened by the shooter.

He shouted: “I’ll f***ing have you! You want to get funny with us?”

The taxi driver described three load bangs and then feeling “terrible pain” in his chest.

He had been shot twice by a sawn off shotgun fired from one metre away.

Both gangs then fled leaving the taxi driver critically injured in his cab.

He was taken to hospital were he had to have surgery to clean the wound and skin grafts for two wounds to his chest and arm which left him with permanent nerve damage.

In a statement he told the court that he continued to have nightmares and flashbacks about the incident and even unable to hold his grandchild because of his injuries.

Kurtis Sweeney

Mr Travers, said: “He feels what happened to him should never have happened. He was only doing his job and he got shot. He feels he could have died that night and the man would not have been caught.”

All three men made no comment interview to police but eventually pleaded guilty to affray and possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of injury.

McCarthy, of Norbury Walk, West Vale, was seen on CCTV punching and kicking at the taxi, a Skoda Octavia, while standing near the gunman.

Clark, of Roughwood Drive, Kirkby, threw punches and kicks at the people inside the taxi and threw an object at it.

McCarthy claimed not to be a gang member or know the identity of the shooter but Judge Mark Brown, said: “I’m sorry but I don’t believe a word of it.”

Describing the incident as a ”pitched battle”, he said of the shooting: “That in my judgement was a very chilling thing to have done and really was an attempted execution by him.”

He added: “Had I been sentencing the person who fired the gun into the taxi, hitting Mr Rimmer and causing him serious harm, it would have been an extremely lengthy sentence indeed and would have been expressed in double figures.”

To the three in the dock, he said: “It (the shotgun) was a gang weapon. You intended it would be used to cause a person to believe thatunlawful violence would be used against them. There was always the risk that gun would be fired. my judgement this is an extremely serious case of its type.”

He jailed McCarthy for six years with no separate penalty for simple possession of cocaine while Clark and Sweeney were sent to a young offenders institution for six years.